Conjecturing the Flower Girl
by sanctum-c
Summary: Sleeping in the basement of the Seventh Heaven; on one side of Tifa is the conundrum of Cloud and a memory of events different to hers. On the other is a whole other puzzle: how and why (and by who) did Cloud gain the flower he gave Marlene?


Tifa opened her eyes. Dim in the basement of the Seventh Heaven but not quiet. Jessie's computer hummed and clicked in the corner. Arrayed around her were the members of Avalanche, deep in sleep. From outside came the distant pulse of music, bursts of louder voices as people made their way past the long closed bar. Tifa fidgeted around and tried to doze off again. Tomorrow's mission was not the only thing preventing her sleeping.

Cloud was beside her on his back, head tilted away. Something was bothering him, his face and hands twitching periodically, reacting to some dream or other. Tifa suppressed a sigh. A momentary decision earlier resulted in the current complications of his presence. His insistence on a passage of five years since their last meeting called into question her memories. From before she found him on the station – insensible one moment, upright and coherent the next – the events of Nibelheim had fuelled her subsequent actions. The need to strike back, to stop Shinra.

Shinra who produced SOLDIER and thus Sephiroth; the man who burnt her home. Who murdered her father. Shinra who leeched at the ground beneath them in Nibelheim and would – in time – suck up the source of the astonishing Mako fountain they discovered on the winding route up to the reactor. Coming to Midgar only added to her determination; Sephiroth might be dead, but Shinra were far from vanquished.

But Cloud claimed to have been present for those days prior to the fire. Cloud Strife who at the time no one could find. Cloud Strife who somehow took the SOLDIER named Zack's position in her memories with some strange and bewildering inconsistencies as a result.

Was her memory at fault? Had something strange occurred in the last hour of her last day in Nibelheim? When she swore vengeance and tried to strike Sephiroth down. Somehow moved to Midgar with a ragged scar across her chest from the Masamune and a litany of bruises across her back. She had lost time before in the fall from Mount Nibel after Mom died. Similar to this?

A dim memory of the reactor, the word Jenova huge above her. Of losing her footing and falling back, of Sephiroth's cold indifference as his sword opened a river of pain across her. She would have tumbled down the stairs. The bruising – had she hit her head and muddled her memories yet again?

Blond hair remembered as black; a SOLDIER named Cloud remembered as Zack. Had there truly been a letter from her other friends who sought out Cloud for a gathering but failed? Had she seen Cloud walk into town but still fled into the back alleys? The photo- If her memory proved reliable at all, there existed evidence of the day she guided the SOLDIERs up Mount Nibel. If such a thing could have survived the fire.

Suppress another sigh. Getting too worked up and now sleep was distant. She rolled onto her other side, putting Cloud and his past behind her. But here too was another reminder of his actions – and potentially almost as strange. Marlene lay cradled in Barret's arms, still clutching the flower Cloud gave her. The one pinned to his uniform, near forgotten when he walked into the Seventh Heaven. From what Barret related of the mission, he had acquired it somewhere between the destruction of Mako Reactor 1 and meeting up with Avalanche on the train back to the slums.

Not a huge window to have found such a thing. There were places on the Upper Plate selling flowers for extortionate prices – and Cloud had barely a gil to his name. Leaving either theft or a generous individual. The former felt wrong somehow. His return to Avalanche seemed motivated by his desire to keep moving, to take his money and leave. Not as much of a concern now, but until she reminded him of the Water Tower-

No. Theft did not fit; someone had pinned the flower to his uniform. A deliberate act by another.

The generous individual; someone had given or sold him the flower for a fraction of a fraction of its cost. Cloud had stalled or been waylaid by someone in Sector Eight. Had bought or received a flower. Near forgot about it until Marlene pointed it out when he returned to the Seventh Heaven – and as a result she received the rare blossom.

A nuisance, stray memory. Something about a girl in one of the other sectors selling flowers. The girl came up a few times in conversations with bar patrons, though no one could agree if she was some beautiful innocent who wanted to spread the joy of flowers to the city or an unscrupulous hard bargain-type luring customers in with her sex-appeal and demanding outrageous prices, men tripping at her feet to pay.

Cloud's situation pointed more to the former. But- Could such a person endure Midgar, especially in the slums? Was she – whoever she was – canny to be whatever she needed to be to the people she encountered? Plausible. But there remained so many connected and linked questions as a result. How was she operating? If she was some naive or overly young innocent, where and how could she get flowers to sell for so little? Nothing grew in the slums. There were stray mentions of a (the same?) flower girl on the Upper Plate (where Cloud potentially encountered her) where the flowers in the city grew. Expensive to buy and sell on. Unless she got them from outside?

No. The ground outside Midgar was as worthless as the ground in the slums. To find something usable – at least as far as Barret knew after his journey into Midgar a few years prior – she would need to trek miles and miles outside the ring of destruction encircling Midgar. So perhaps it made more sense if she was somehow buying the flowers and importing them from growers in Kalm or further afield. Which lead to a further complication and seeming contradiction; if she was paying out sufficient to import the flowers – or if she had some connection to get the flowers for a fraction of the price – why bother selling to the slums at all? Why not focus where the money was; the Upper Plate?

The flower girl made no sense – more so if the flower Marlene held had indeed come from her. Leading to a strange conjectured chain of events; Cloud, while making his way to the station after the destruction of Mako Reactor 1, had met the flower girl (at least in a sensible location for selling something so rare). Something said or done resulted in Cloud gaining a flower either for free or for a handful of gil (a less than sensible action on the seller's part if she - as rumoured - adjusted prices per customer and always to a higher cost than anticipated).

The focus was a sufficient distraction to let Tifa's mind drift, a strange mystery, but solvable if or when she had time. A curiosity – and surely the flower girl would make sense in the end. How might she do it? A secretive garden perhaps somewhere in the slums? Hidden away, interior lit by lamps and kept cool in the summer months? A vast field of pots, or a layer of soil raised separate from the poisoned terrain of the slums? Perhaps a larger scale operation than one might expect. Maybe there was more than one flower girl and behind them someone else was in charge, someone who sent her workers out into the slums and to the Upper plate.

The garden would be an amazing sight. Row after row of flowers, yellow (and perhaps reds and blues and pinks and-) petals, natural greenery and soil not afflicted with Mako leaks and heavy metal poisoning. And perhaps if she could find it, could get there- Perhaps Tifa would be able to close her eyes. And there under the lamps, surrounded by flowers, pretend she was somewhere other than Midgar. Somewhere better.


End file.
